Herbert Brown (1902) evidently saw a similar flight, of which he says: “In flight they have little or none of that laborious undulating movement so common to its kind, but in action and flight they seem possessed of peculiarities supposed to belong to birds of a totally different family. Today not less than fifty of them were circling through the air, at an elevation of about 500 feet, with all the ease and grace of the Falconidae. Not a stroke of the wing was apparent. * * * Those high in the air were sailing in great circles. They kept it up indefinitely and had the appearance of being so many miniature crows. When sailing they appear to open their wings to the fullest extent possible.”
Mr. Neff (1928) states that “these birds love the hottest sunshine, and are commonly found perched in the tiptop of some tall partly-dead tree, whence they can scan the air for insect food. They rarely sit vertically upright on a branch as do most other woodpeckers, but perch cross-wise with ease. They seldom climb up the trunk or branches, although perfectly capable of doing so, and are rarely heard tapping.” They perch occasionally on wires, an uncommon habit with other woodpeckers.
Major Bendire (1895) observes: “On its breeding grounds Lewis’s woodpecker appears to be a stupid and rather sluggish bird; it does not show nearly as much parental affection as most of the other members of this family, and is much less demonstrative. It is not at all shy at such times, and will often cling to some convenient limb on the same tree while its eggs are being taken, without making the least complaint.”
Voice.—Bendire (1895) says: “It is by far the most silent woodpecker I have met, and, aside from a low twittering, it rarely utters a loud note. Even when suddenly alarmed, and when it seeks safety in flight, the shrill ‘huit, huit’ given on such occasions by nearly all of our woodpeckers is seldom uttered by it. Only when moving about in flocks, on their first arrival in the spring and during the mating season, which follows shortly afterwards, does it indulge in a few rattling call notes, resembling those of the Red-shafted Flicker, and it drums more or less, in a lazy sort of way, on the dead top of a tall pine, or a suitable limb of a cottonwood or willow.”
Ralph Hoffmann (1927) writes: “For a great part of the year the Lewis woodpecker is a silent bird, uttering not even a call note, but in the mating season it utters a harsh chirr and a high-pitched squalling chee-up, repeated at rather long intervals. Adult birds utter near the nest a series of sharp metallic cries like the syllable ick, ick, ick, which when rapidly repeated become a rattle. The young in the nest utter the usual hissing sound of young woodpeckers.”
Field marks.—Lewis’s woodpecker should be easily recognized. At a distance it appears likes a black bird, the back and the upper and lower surfaces of the wings being black, with no conspicuous white showing anywhere, and with a crowlike flight, broad wings and black tail. At short range, the greenish sheen of the back may glisten in the sunlight, and the silvery gray collar and pinkish underparts may be seen, as well as the gray upper breast and perhaps the red face.
Fall.—This woodpecker seems to be a highly migratory species. From the northern parts of its range it disappears almost entirely during winter; and throughout its entire range it is given to extensive wanderings, being very abundant in certain localities during fall and winter in certain seasons and at other seasons entirely absent. The species is highly gregarious in fall, wandering about in large flocks in search for suitable food supplies.
Mr. Rathbun tells me that this woodpecker is found in Washington from April to about November and occasionally is seen in winter, and says: “In this part [western] of the State the fall migration of this bird seems to begin early in September. Once, very early in the month, on our arrival at a lake not far from Seattle, we noticed a large number of these woodpeckers in three or four deciduous trees along the shore. Occasionally, a few of the birds would make short flights after insects in the air, but by far the larger number were more or less inactive and appeared to be resting, as some remained motionless where perched. And when one did change its position, it did this in a listless manner. Our arrival at the lake was rather late in the afternoon, and from the actions of the birds as a whole we gained the impression that they must have made quite an extended flight that day on their movement southward. On several other occasions in September we have seen this woodpecker as it was migrating. In each case a good many were in company, though rather loosely associated. And once, moving in a southerly direction with them for a very brief time, were numbers of nighthawks, swallows, and Vaux’s swifts flying around for insects.”
Mr. Neff (1928) writes:
This species, more than all its kin, moves in flocks in autumn. After the nesting season it gathers into flocks of from 10 to 300 or more. In such numbers it drops down into the fruit districts of southern Oregon and of northern California, and disaster results. * * *